From The Settlement of Prince Edward County by Nick and Helma Mika. Transcribed here by Linda Herman

Pioneers of Prince Edward County 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

JOHN HICKS

Welsh born. 

Wales was the birthplace of John Hicks. When John emigrated to America, he chose to live close to Long Island. John's son, Edward, moved to Philadelphia where he raised four sons, Edward, Benjamin, Joseph and Joshua. By 1776 they had accumulated much property which Benjamin cared for while John and Benjamin's three brothers went to war in the American Revolution. In 1778, Edward was sent by the British to Boston as a spy. He was taken prisoner by the Americans and sentenced to by hanged. His plan of escape was to feign illness in order to be allowed to walk outdoors close to the prison during the evening. Of course, he was inevitably accompanied y a guard, and always handcuffed. Being six feet tall and a man of tremendous physical strength, he simply knocked the guard to the ground one night, and disappeared into the darkness. He made his way to a dam, and hid beneath the waterfall. Here he broke the bolt of his handcuffs between two stones. He stayed under the waterfall a total of thirty-six hours, cold, wet and hungry, but no-one thought to search for him beneath the falls, and he won his freedom.

Edward then headed for the woods, living there for nine days on the raw meat of a chicken. When discovered by a group of horsemen, he jumped from a seventy-foot high cliff, preferring death to being taken prisoner. A bush, at the bottom of the bluff broke his fall, and Edward survived to tell the tale. He was left for dead by his pursuers, so proceeded to press toward British territory. At last, with a grateful hear, he arrived on Canadian soil. Edward's strange tale had a stranger ending, for his prison guard later came to live with his son in Prince Edward County.

Edward Hicks lived in North Marysburgh with his two sons, Edward and John. Edward married Lucretia Miller and secondly, a widow. John married a girl by the name of Hineman. Many descendants of the Hicks family reside today in Prince Edward County. Captain Calvin Hicks navigated ships on the Great Lakes for over twenty years.